Corporate feminism and the undoing of gendered inequality in a high-tech firm

Abstract

Feminism remains contested. There are diverging trends of feminism being perceived as extreme or even obsolete to not being radical, progressive or inclusive enough (Projansky, 2001; Scharff, 2012). While there are women who tend to disidentify with feminism, rejecting the feminist label, men start to embrace feminist identifications. From #HeForShe-feminism, Beyoncé’s hip-hop feminism to Sandberg’s “lean in” feminism, feminism is able to spark conversations far beyond academia and brings in various experiences and realities as object of study. The widespread and renewed attention to gender inequalities opens up a challenging space for debate in which individual female empowerment is juxtaposed to the structural betterment of women as a group, where white feminist theories are read through the eyes of women of colour, and where a multitude of feminisms enfold. Within this rich field of the study of gender and inequalities, moderate feminisms, including corporate feminism, attracted our attention to investigate the (re)production of gendered identities by organisations. We draw upon Roy (2013, p. 106) to investigate the potential of moderation, which she describes as a “third space of political possibility” and conceptualizes “as a practice (ie emphasizing its performativity) rather than as a position in relation to binary extremes” (italics in original). Given the potential of the knowledge economy to change gender relations as it involves a new production paradigm (Walby, 2011b; Caprile & Pascual, 2011), how organisational practices do or undo gender, and sustain or rather disrupt gendered inequalities opens up a challenging research domain.